Food Odyssey

I started having an occasional "pop-up restaurant" in January 2010. I called it Food Odyssey because I wanted to travel around the Mediterranean like Odysseus (who may have ventured as far as the North Seqa too).  On the first night 20 people squeezed into the dining room, and we ate warming Italian food - it was good and I made a bit of money.   The second effort was a bistro type meal - what one might eat on the other side of the channel.  The third meal - this was a very interesting experiment - Victorian Jewish food from the cookbook of Lady Montefiore - the wife of one of the great Jewish heroes as well as a denizen of Ramsgate. It was an extraordinary meal - but I am not entirely convinced about escabeche - although some people liked it a lot.   It's a lightly pickled fish - I think I'd prefer to use lime juice, rather than vinegar. 

This January I cooked for a murder mystery dinner party - and then got to appear in the drama.   That was fun: I did 60's retro food: stuffed mushrooms, boeuf bourguinnon (and a veg. alternative - what was it?  Something very good), pommes dauphinoises, followed by Black Forest Gateau and caramelised oranges.

Recently I've been doing "outdoor catering" - a stall at the Margate Bazaar - selling bread with seeds in, savoury things (pastry wrapped around various foods in different shapes) and a few cakes: the Australian fruit cake went down a storm.  However the financial returns were inadequate to compensate for the loss of the weekend (spending part of Saturday cooking and then getting up to bake on Sunday morning, followed by several hours standing at the stall in uncertain weather).

Over the years I've done a lot of catering one way or another. Recently I've been doing "canapes" for various events - my favourite is the rather expensive "Turkish fish finger" - actually they are called Blehmat - or fish sticks, but I like my name better. 

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to do a small catering job, and Dawn suggested bringing leaflets/cards etc. I can't afford a website yet - so I thought I'd start a blog - and then the cards would cite the blog and anyone interested could read about food I cook - and get some idea of what I can do for them.